Saturday, July 14, 2007

Brik Blastoff Of The Outback

Here's a project I have been dying to do for a long time. I designed it. Tom Minton helped write it. Lynne Naylor did presentation art. Jeff John put the story bible together. Chris Peterson did the inks.

THE WORLD OF BRIK BLASTOFF

Four hundred billion years in the future, long after every single one of you will be dead, the universe as we know it shall no longer be. Planet Earth, destroyed in a nuclear holocaust is an ancient myth. The remnants of earth's particles have been fused into complex agar molecules. These molecules are buried deep in asteroids scattered throughout the Milky Way.

Agar is the most prized possession in the future, because it is the perfect food. People build colonies around the asteroid belts and mine the elusive material. Piracy and Agar Wars are constants in the future, and it is a world of chaos.

Piercing through this chaos stabs a shining bolt of order — Brik Blastoff of the Outback. Stationed on a lone outpost on Ganymede, Brik Blastoff and his noble Rocket Rangers keep a stern watch on the galaxy, ever ready to free the oppressed, right wrongs and enforce their prime directive: "To interfere with alien cultures, to bring freedom and democracy to places where they don't even want it, and above all, to make the galaxy a safe place in which to be Manly."

Brik Blastoff

Captain of the Rocket Rangers, paternal and extremely ethical, Brik is a role model's role model.

A send-up of masculine stereotypes, Brik never unclenches his virile teeth, not even while eating. He sucks food into his system by sheer will power. Every morning he irons his head, then prepares a pot of scalding black coffee, which he pours onto his face!

Jimi

Brik's teenaged (thirteen months) sidekick and first lieutenant of the Rocket Rangers.

Intolerant of lawbreakers and overly eager to please Brik, this wild teen must sometimes be restrained and disciplined by his more experienced crew members.

This bubbly youth is also the most talented member of the team. He entertains the crew with jokes, songs, mime, and some complex dog tricks.

Jimi can hardly wait to experience puberty.

Steve

Smartest of the Rocket Rangers. The only normal recruit.

Steve is the straight man in the series, although she is a woman. Her name was given to her by Brik, who thinks women are just funny-looking men.

Steve is the science engineer. She also is a liberated woman, a rare thing in the future, and this drives Brik crazy.

Nit Hoatzin

Psycho female recruit. Nearly as talented as Jimi.

Outwardly appearing similar to a beautiful earth woman, Nit Hoatzin (named by Brik himself in a rare fit of creativity) is actually of an ancient, dying alien race known simply as "Derek." While communicating telepathically with the only other survivor of her people, Nit exhibits some pretty weird behavior: idiosyncratic eye movements, numerous spasms, and a failure to bleed.

Nit’s duties include guiding young Jimi through puberty.

Comet the Wonder Cow

The cow's cow.

Comet is a real cow who floats through space who is occassionally encountered by our cast in their adventures. He eventually replaces the Buck Bronto character after Buck's rapid demise via her own spontaneous combustion.

The villain of the piece, Dik was once a revered super genius like Brik, but has since turned evil. Dik goes back to college days with Brik, when they were still friends. Brik always outclassed Dik in every department, a fact that still makes Dik's blood hop. Dik cracked long ago, swearing vengeance on all biological life forms — especially Brik Blastoff.

47 comments:

Good stuff as always John. Hey, whatever happened to those Spümcø Buddies from the Weekend Pussy Hunt cartoons? Those guys were awesome. Is there anywhere on the internets tubes where one can download them? I somehow erased 'em...

Buck Bronto (the fat women right?)looks like a Gerald Scarfe character (you a fan?)Love the lighting and stance on the the last picture of the comic, nice, jimmy with a big chin hilarious! Steve's hot, I'd find it hard to say her name though since I know a lot of dudes with Steve for a name Liberation!!!

Of topic but from a last post, I've made a new blog of all my painted and drawn girls, a blog with some old Ren & Stimpy gear (Toys and Clothes) it also has an old Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse toy that you may like John.And I've posted a new 'Golden Book' inspired T-shirt on my old blog!

This is the weirdest concept for a show I've seen in a lot of time, but I don't say it as a bad thing. It is actually very innovative in visual therms. It kinda seem to have a comic book style, those girls kind of reminded me of Betty and Veronica (well, especially the blonde in the comic book pages) and the man characters are a little like comic book superheroes. There's some characters that I don't really know if they would work in animation because of the detailed designs, but if you guys think they could move smoothly then they can, cause you know a hell of a lot about animation, after all.

One thing I'm not sure if I like is the presence of this kind of transmution of the Jimmy The Idiot Boy character into another one, but other than that, the designs rock and it seems like a lot of fun.

Brik was intended to make use of Robert Heinlein-esque stories, imagined by cartoonists, rather than Douglas Adams tales. John K's unique, undiluted take on sci-fi in that series has yet to reach the screen; Ren and Stimpy was a different franchise entirely, accomodating only bits of the sci-fi spectrum. Comet, a theoretical cow, would've been the first intentionally male cow in animation history. (THE COW villain in the 1987 Mighty Mouse may still hold that honor.) Today male cows virtually litter the bogus cartoon landscape, even co-starring in lame, faux cutting edge CGI features. The unsung Comet paved the way for a veritable herd of wealthy bovines.

Someone is bound to bring up the similarity between Brik and that one character from that one show nobody watches, Venture Brothers. I guess I was that someone. Yours, of course, is the better of the two.

As great as the drawings are, the comic feels too much like the wrong characters advertising the wrong thing to me. It's like the Sex Pistols advertising car insurance, or something, as the content is so wild while the subject it's advertising is so bland and business like. Do people with stock trades even watch cartoons?

The reason ad's like the old character based ones worked was because they were selling stuff like cereals, not some dull networking service.

As or the characters, it seems a bit too similar to Ripping Friends to me. Two of the characters are close to identical.

Right on John. Thanks for sharing this slice. I saw Brik and the Space Jimi back when I was actually at Sheridan taking Classical animation in 1994. A friend gave me the Film Threat issue with your short interview called "blast action hero" I thought this was something that would materialize. A dream project for these eyes! Do you still have those shots they used in Film Threat? Top notch and expecially the femmes. Just sexy as darn-gosh-it. So did Jimi turn into the idiot boy when that idea folded? - OH and for trivial sake that AT&T device was ill-fated, launched in some markets in 1995. $13.00 a month! A big pop in the lip for any sucker.! Wheres Bob Dobb's when you need him?

I personally like specific design, and I use it all the time; I draw from photographs to make my characters look individual. I also like using specific designs of characters to show my love for something or by some complicated offensive means. The more specific, the more controversial.